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Skilled Foreign Workers Treated as Indentured Servants
theodp writes: A year-long investigation by NBC Bay Area's Investigative Unit and The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) raises questions about the H-1B visa program. In a five-part story that includes a mini-graphic novel called Techsploitation, CIR describes how the system rewards job brokers who steal wages and entrap Indian tech workers in the U.S., including the awarding of half a billion dollars in Federal tech contracts to those with labor violations. "Shackling workers to their jobs," CIR found after interviewing workers and reviewing government agency and court documents, "is such an entrenched business practice that it has even spread to U.S. nationals. This bullying persists at the bottom of a complex system that supplies workers to some of America's richest and most successful companies, such as Cisco Systems Inc., Verizon and Apple Inc."
In a presumably unrelated move, the U.S. changed its H-1B record retention policy last week, declaring that records used for labor certification, whether in paper or electronic, "are temporary records and subject to destruction" after five years under the new policy. "There was no explanation for the change, and it is perplexing to researchers," reports Computerworld. "The records under threat are called Labor Condition Applications (LCA), which identify the H-1B employer, worksite, the prevailing wage, and the wage paid to the worker." Lindsay Lowell, director of policy studies at the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University, added: "It undermines our ability to evaluate what the government does and, in today's world, retaining electronic records like the LCA is next to costless [a full year's LCA data is less than 1 GB]." President Obama, by the way, is expected to use his executive authority to expand the H-1B program after the midterm elections.
In a presumably unrelated move, the U.S. changed its H-1B record retention policy last week, declaring that records used for labor certification, whether in paper or electronic, "are temporary records and subject to destruction" after five years under the new policy. "There was no explanation for the change, and it is perplexing to researchers," reports Computerworld. "The records under threat are called Labor Condition Applications (LCA), which identify the H-1B employer, worksite, the prevailing wage, and the wage paid to the worker." Lindsay Lowell, director of policy studies at the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University, added: "It undermines our ability to evaluate what the government does and, in today's world, retaining electronic records like the LCA is next to costless [a full year's LCA data is less than 1 GB]." President Obama, by the way, is expected to use his executive authority to expand the H-1B program after the midterm elections.
Is anyone even remotely surprised by this?
They do. The talent is accepting slave wages.
That's literally the definition of a union, though.
I mean, more effective unions have mandatory membership, but a union itself is literally a group of employees in a field banding together to protecting their common interests.
There are abuses on all sides of this program. Just end it. The tech worker shortage is a lie. This is no longer about cherry picking the best and brightest scientific minds. It has become a system of replacing local workers with lower cost indentured servants.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Companies like Verizon, Cisco, HP, and Walmart contract employment because direct-hire is nearly impossible. These companies insist you work in armpits like Bentonville Arkansas or Decalb Georgia so your salary can be shuffled down the chain to 40 grand a year not under the implication that your services are worthless, but under the assertion that the "cost of living" is so inexpensive you shouldnt need a respectable wage. American workers caught on to this shifty crap pretty quickly and now in the race to pedal labor in general into the earth, contract companies are picking up the slack. Cognizent and Infosys are two companies that actively avoid american labour capable of contesting wage theft and frivolous litigation in court. They avoid it by specifying explicitly the requirement for an H1B in order to incense foreign workers to apply. If you receive a call as an american, its generally from a roaring indian callcenter with poor diction and once your salary comes up, the call ends.
H1B is the new slave-ship, and because corporations control the general direction of american government, it isnt likely the H1B process will get any more reasonable.
Good people go to bed earlier.
These poor 3rd-worlders have unique talents that could never be found locally, don'tcha know!?!?
You mean someone who spent 7 years getting a PhD being abused and working 6-7 day 80+ hour weeks, then working as a post-doc with no hope of ever being faculty, at 60+ hour weeks and being paid $40k or less until their retirement without any benefits?
It's a talent all right.
He's doing everything wrong (so have the last X presidents, so I'm not just picking on Obama).
The H1-B visa program is a complete detriment to America's job market, and does NOTHING to improve American's lives. It doesn't even improve the corporate bottom feeders using them as they have to keep hiring more and more of these unskilled brainless zombies to do the work of one competent American, of which there are plenty.
Obamacare under private corporate control is a fiasco raising profits to insurance companies to all time highs, while cheating more Americans out of hard earned money.
Obama's "open government" is the most secret, most law breaking in decades if not the entire history of our nation, with all of the illegal and unconstitutional spying, data collection, money thievery, secret arrests, secret courts, secret police, secret laws, all of which are illegal and unconstitutional.
I dare say he's committed multiple acts of treason against our nation during a time of war. Lookup the punishment for treason during a time of war...
THe heads of the NSA, CIA and FBI are also guilty of the same acts of treason and should get the same punishment.
"President Obama, by the way, is expected to use his executive authority to expand the H-1B program after the midterm elections."
I don't get it. If it's a good thing, do it now. If it's a bad thing then why do it later or at all ?!?!?
Filing this under hope and change
Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind. -- Mark Harrold
My COBRA insurance is higher than the mortgauge. This payment pretty much sucks up all expendable income normally used for living expenses.Many younger workers simply forgo the insurance payments.
Wait, I was under the impression that these health insurance exchanges would create a competitive marketplace where people could buy insurance at reasonable prices even if they weren't eligible for subsidies. You mean that isn't true?
>Unions have mandatory membership for a damn good reason. It used to be that company men could come to your house at night and "persuade" you to voluntarily withdraw from the union.
Yeah, instead union members come to your house at night and "persuade" you to voluntarily support the union instead. Such a big improvement.
(Don't believe me? Google "slashed tires" "Detroit" and either "UAW" or "Teamsters'".)
These pro-union weenies make big promises but just read newspaper archives about what the unions actually do if you want to find out what's really going to happen.
I am a European citizen living in California after six years on an H1B visa and now several years of permanent residence.
I don't doubt that these abuses occur at some companies, but there *are* companies who are interested in just hiring talent from wherever they can find it and paying above market rate to retain that talent. The US job market is a lot more cutthroat than in the main EU countries, with far fewer legal protections for workers and thus far more variability in working standards, but if you understand that going in and do your research you can do just fine.
I had a pretty easy case of a medium-sized company that got acquired by a slightly larger medium-sized company when I was on year 2 of my H1B visa, leading to a pretty straightforward transfer of visa and the only inconvenience being my green card application got delayed for a year while they repeated the labor certifications.
Other people I know in similar situations have run into other issues like their startup going out of business or laying them off. All of them who wanted to stay were able to find other jobs and transfer their visas. Others have actually left my company and transferred their visas to other companies with no problem whatsoever. I've never known anyone who was trapped or treated badly.
It's not all doom and gloom out here. If you have valuable skills and you choose the right job market (San Francisco Bay Area is the obvious choice) then there is lots of money to be made and career development to be had, even if you're from Europe. I compete with my US citizen peers with my skills and passion, not with lower wages. In fact, half of the manager/tech-leader tier in my organization (of which I am a member, after being promoted twice during my tenure) are foreign nationals from Europe, either currently on H1B visas or formerly on H1B and subsequently granted permanent residence.
Larger companies like Twitter even have employee incentives aimed specifically at immigrant workers. I'm not a Twitter employee so I don't know all the details, but some of my former co-workers (who transferred to Twitter while still on H1B visas) were immediately put on the green card track and tell me that the company offers in-office-hours training on things like understanding the US corporate culture, improving your English accent, and eventually helping you study for citizenship interviews/tests if that is the path you want to take. My company is smaller and not able to provide such perks, but they still put me on the green card track after only a year of tenure (green card application is expensive) and were supportive of my need to occasionally spend days waiting in government offices for various reasons.